Jerry Everhart
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

JE/MS:  What are you currently working on/writing/researching?

RB:   The knowledge base for my writing and research rests largely with conversations that I have with school practitioners.  This involves visiting schools from time to time and conducting interactive workshops . events where I talk but also try and listen.  So it's unusual "research."  But I do feel that I have a finger on the pulse of public education in this country through these many interactions with teachers and administrators.I have just completed a little book, Lessons Learned. I've talked a lot and written about the importance of craft knowledge in our profession.  That is to say, what we learn and know by showing up on the job for 220 days a year for 5, 10, 15 years.  What we learn about parent involvement, staff development, curriculum development, discipline or whatever.

Unfortunately, I find that this craft knowledge is not widely valued by those outside of schools like superintendents or state departments of education.  Even more tragically, it's not widely valued by those inside schools.  So the teacher who stands up in a faculty meeting and says "I have this great idea to share about grouping kids in math," is frequently met with dirty looks, people putting their coats on, or making put-downs such as "Who do you think you are?" 

But, I continue to believe that if educators could develop ways of sharing, celebrating, honoring and exchanging craft knowledge, schools could be transformed overnight.  There resides under the roof of every schoolhouse a tremendous body of insight and wisdom.  But, by and large it's not disclosed for a couple of reasons.

One reason is that the cruel world of schools places educators in the role of competitors for scarce resources and recognition.  I give you some good ideas about improving kids in math, more parents may want their kids in your class than mine.

As I've said, craft knowledge is not often shared because it's not received with a great deal of welcome by one's colleagues.  Yet every June thousands of teachers and administrators will leave schools to retire, resign, transfer, or die.  They will carry out of the school with them all the hard won craft knowledge they have accumulated in the school of hard knocks over many, many years.  It will be forever lost to the profession.

This is a tragic loss to the profession.  The literature from adult development suggests that when people get to be about my age, 65, there's a need to give back to share with those up-and-coming everything that we have learned ourselves.  So when there is no structure or format for this to occur in schools, there's a loss-not only to the school-but also to the educator whose craft knowledge will not be disclosed.  Lessons Learned is then my attempt to distill and to share my craft knowledge before I "walk out of the schoolhouse."

JE/MS:  Let us ask you a different, related question then:  How would you differentiate craft knowledge and classroom management?

RB:  Craft knowledge is the knowledge and skills we acquire from experience. 

Classroom management is but a small subset of all of the craft knowledge that an educator might possess.  I've learned that if you mix up boys and girls in the seating arrangement, some interesting things happen, rather than if the boys are here and the girls are here. 

JE/MS:  You use the term "nondiscussables" to describe the known but unspoken impediments to school change.  Can you elaborate and provide some examples how one might initiate a dialogue on "nondiscussables?"

RB:   I think schools are full of "nondiscussables," these are very consequential, important topics which do not get openly addressed, but rather are discussed in the men's room, on the playing field, at the dinner table, and in the parking lot.  There's something fearful and anxiety-laden about these issues that make them difficult to talk about in polite society - like a faculty meeting.  So really a "nondiscussable" is a subject that commands directly import, but addressing and attending to it is risky.

Let me mention a few "nondiscussables" that jump out for me in schools. 

One of them is the leadership of the principal.  That gets talked about a lot!  Folks have a whole lot to say about it, but it doesn't get talked about in the faculty meeting or the PTA meetings. 

Another thing that is often not discussed is race.  One of the drams of American public education is that we can bring under the roof of the schoolhouse people from lots of different backgrounds, races, ethnic groups, economic means, and that they will somehow become acquainted, get to know one another, maybe like one another, maybe even learn something from one another.  But how can that happen if we can't even talk about race because it's so volatile for everyone? 

Another "nondiscussable" I've found is the history of the school. 

Two teachers had a fight over a roll of masking tape five years ago and they're still not talking to each other. There's a lot of that kind of baggage in schools that never get addressed openly.  Therefore, it continues to be corrosive to the school.  One of the "nondiscussables" I find in schools is the nature of the adult relationships.  How we get along here.  Are we colleagues?  Are we adversaries?  Engaged in parallel play?  Are we congenial?  I find the nature of these adult relationships has more to do with the character and the quality of the school and with the accomplishment of the youngsters than anything else. But, if we can't talk about them, how are we ever going to address it and strengthen these relationships? 

And indeed that's what this little book, Lessons Learned, is about --what I've learned over the years about relationships and how they influence our education and organizations.  It's a collection of stores and learnings gleaned from these experiences.

JE/MS:  Could such dialogues be initiated from constituents outside the school, let's say about the issue of race for example?

RB:   I think in many instances these unmentionables or "nondiscussables" may be initiated only by outsiders.  I think insiders know where all the eggs are and they walk carefully around them.  The outsiders come in and don't know where the fragile eggs are located.  Thus they can walk with immunity or impunity through these egg fields.  This may be one of the only good reasons to have an outside consultant come inside the school-to name and address the elephant in the living room.

JE/MS: It's like the State department or NCATE or these outside accrediting agencies.

RB:  Exactly!  I have conducted workshops around nondiscussables - being an outsider coming into a school and I have learned a lot from teachers and principals about how to handle the "nondiscussables". One approach is to sit down with a group of people, let's say at a faculty meeting, and invite teachers to write down on a card the big nondiscussables they experience in the school.  The "elephants in our living room.  Race or leadership or the principal or the underperforming teacher.  Now naming our nondiscussables is risky.  It's necessary to provide some anonymity.  So the representative of the union might collect the cards, type them up on a sheet of paper, and hand them back to whoever was running the session.  The principal or better still the leadership team looks them over carefully at a subsequent faculty meeting.  The list is put up on the board:  "here are the "nondiscussables" we experience here." 

If the "underperforming teacher" shows up 16 times, you could indicate the frequency. 

Now the question becomes, "Okay, we've just violated a taboo.  We have publicly named all these things never before discussed.  What are we going to do about them?"  There's an expectation that we do something. The team might run the list through two or three screens.  A first consideration is "Which of these "nondiscussables" are inappropriate to discuss?"Every "nondiscussable" shouldn't be discussed openly by a school faculty; some are best discussed in the parking lot.

For instance, the sexual orientation of a teacher. Or the teacher who has terminal cancer.  We're not going to discuss that.  So the faculty can cross those off the list that's on the board.  The next consideration might be "which ones of these do not interfere with our purpose or our mission in this school?"  Or, "Which are not impediments to what it is we hope to accomplish here?" Someone might say, "Well the school board politics."  That's a nondiscussable but it's not interfering with teaching youngsters how to read and write.  What you are left with then is a list of nondiscussables that in fact DO interfere with us fulfilling our mission here. 

Another screen might be to identify the half dozen nondiscussables which interfere most with our mission.  The school leadership team might next identify a little group who cared deeply about one of these and say "Would you be willing to help lead a faculty meeting which provides the structure and safety to address this issue, say 'How budget decisions are made here?'" One by one, almost everybody on the faculty gets involved in helping lead one of these meetings.

"Nondiscussables" are like landmines that litter the floor of every schoolhouse.  Tripwires emanate from each.  We are immobilized by these things.  We can't move right or left, up or down!  We can't talk about curriculum development or evaluating kids or involving parents or anything important because it's going to trip one of these wires and detonate a mine. Thus, before we can become school-based reformers, we're going to have to become minesweepers, find ways of clearing the path so then we can proceed with this crucial work.  Only after addressing their nondiscussables do teachers report they are able to begin the work of school reform!  So addressing these "nondiscussables" is a precondition to making significant changes in a school.

JE/MS:  Okay, let's switch gears.  Who has influenced you and why?  Mentored you?

RB:  I would say the greatest influence on me as an education-including the influence that led to me becoming an educator-was not a person but rather my own experience going through 13 years of public schools.  It just didn't work well for me. Let me explain.  

When I was an assistant to the Dean at the School of Education at Harvard, one of my jobs was interviewing students who wanted to come into the MAT program.  I asked, "Okay, so why do you want to become a teacher?"  And I found that most responses fell almost equally into two groups:  one group said "You know, my experience as a youngster growing up and going to school was so wonderful, and so compelling and so terrific, I want to make sure everybody has it this good."  The other group indicated, "My experience was so painful, so abusive, so endless, I want to make sure nobody else has to go through that."

I have to say that I fall into the latter category.  In a curious way, I think schools own ineptitude generates a large number of people who want to come into this profession, not that I would argue for that as a recruiting strategy.

And so, I became very interested in the question, "Well, if those conditions which I experienced as a student for 13 years-teacher talk, students confined to a desk filling out worksheets-didn't work for me and they aren't working that well for other people today, then what are the conditions that can promote profound levels of learning for me and for other people?"

JE/MS:   Teachers, including the two of us, generally agree that time is their most valuable commodity and that you've noted that lack of time is a major impediment to change.  What are some practices you might recommend to make time for teachers to reflect, explore and bring about change?

RB:   To be sure, these days, teachers and principals are expected to do more with less.  They have more responsibilities, more accountability, with fewer resources and in general, less time.  So the question is, "Okay.  Given that time is finite and necessary in order for anyone to succeed in his or her work, what do you do about that?"  When I visit schools and talk to educators, I often hear people say "That's a waste of time."  For instance, the teacher laboring over corrections of students' compositions - which will not be handed back until days after the paper was written - and then quickly read and passed over by the students.  Time is clearly not being well spent in many, many schools.  Put another way, people are going through the motions and doing things, but those motions and those things they're doing are not directly related to moving someone's learning curve off the chart.

I'm committed to the notion of a school as a community of learners.  I think the most important role of the educator is to constantly search for, discover, find and then provide the conditions which are going to make it likely a youngster's learning curve will go off the chart.  I think that's wonderful criteria to govern the selection of activities in which teachers and principals engage.

I think we need to continuously go through sorting exercise and examine every common school activity.  For instance, professional development and ask "Is this getting someone's  learning curve off the chart?"  If the answer is "no," people come, they comply, they go through the motions, but they're not learning anything, I think we ought to scrap it.

Now, if we can't scrap it because we're required to do it by outside agencies - or because we believe in it's importance, then we need to invent a better way of providing professional development.  Or if it's going well, many are learning from it, we need to say "Let's keep it."  Or if we're not sure how effective the practice is in getting someone's learning curve off the chart, we need to examine it carefully, become practitioner researchers. 

If we want to create time, we must take a hard look at the hundreds of different practices and habituated behaviors so embedded in the schoolhouse, run them through this filter.  For instance, you could look at faculty meetings which chew up huge amounts of time.  I say "great" if somebody is learning something of importance.  Let's retain them.  We could conduct an "exit interview" and find out.  I think we might look at the evaluation of teachers by administrators which also chew up a huge amount of time.  This practice used to drive me nuts as a principal and before that as a teacher.

Those preconferences, observations, post-conferences, write-ups, post-conference after that are worth the time if they promote someone's learning.  We need to talk to teachers and say, "okay, is this succeeding in getting someone's learning curve of the chart?  Yours?  Your students?  Their parents?"When I've worked with educators and asked them those questions, few end up putting these practices in the "keep" pile.  Most opt for the category "invent a better way" or "scrap."

MS:  My personal favorite is pep rallies and assemblies - they used to drive me crazy.

JE/MS:  What are your views regarding "No Child Left Behind?"

RB:   It's an extraordinary accomplishment to have 50 states all agree to comply with one form of evaluation, testing and standardization and one concept of improving their schools. At the same time, it's paradoxical that the legislation comes from a president and a Congress which purports to believe in each state's right to determine its own policies.  And in that sense, I think it's quite an accomplishment

NCLB is clearly more of a political than an educational success.  I think the question is, "What influence will this legislation have on the little elementary school down the street and on every other elementary or middle or high school in this country?"  To date, there's been some good news and some bad news.  I feel we need to monitor this NCLB legislation very carefully and try to retain the good and find ways not to perpetuate the bad.

Some good is coming out of it.  I mean, they are taking a hard look at how youngsters are succeeding or not in schools.  And I find some disturbing but not surprising things.  Some groups, like African Americans or Hispanics are not doing as well as other groups like Asians or Whites. Tests are already beginning to unveil a deep, dark secret:  students - mostly minority students - in cities are BEING left behind. 

Now there's a problem - an obvious problem.  We've got the data.  We've got the information.  We've got the test scores.  What are we going to do about it?  I find the enthusiasm for NCLB greater amongst minority and urban parents than among the suburban parents and educators because NCLB is going to bring new resources to the kids and the schools that have been traditionally underserved.  I think that's a plus.A minus clearly is that this places a new job description on teachers and principals.  And the job description is to accept that your accomplishments are going to be measured by a standardized test over a year or two!

They must not only accept it, but teachers and administrators must take quite seriously what those test scores reveal and find ways to improve those scores.  So of course, you're seeing teachers now teach to the test and lead pep rallies before the test.

  Testing has become an event unto itself!

That is really changing the profession of teaching from one of providing those conditions which we believe promote the greatest learning to complying with what's expected and demanded by super ordinates of subordinates.  This is not why most educators signed up for the profession.  The best people are not long going to remain in such a profession.

JE/MS:  This flows into the next question:  Will high stakes testing continue to increase in popularity and how will the testing impact the course of school reform nationwide?

RB:   I find regional differences.  In some states, testing is being accepted and welcomed!  In some states it's not.  In other states, it's very controversial.  So I think the jury is out on this one.  The logic behind that NCLB movement is leading toward a tremendous push toward standardization in the curriculum in schools and in testing.  We teach what we test.  The distinction between standards and standardization is a very important one to pause over.  I think we are all for high standards!  But I think that standardization does not lead inevitably to high standards!  It may lead to high standards of performance but it won't lead to high standards of learning.

One can have high standards without standardization and you can have standardization without high standards.  I fear that we are moving toward standardization without standards.  That's just opposite of what I would like to see.

JE/MS:  How do alternative licensure programs for principals and teachers, which have a statistically higher attrition rate, impact your long-term vision of craft knowledge in general?

RB:  I'm concerned as are most educators about attracting and retaining quality people in this profession.  Preparation programs are very influential as the gatekeeper determining who gets into the profession.  I also think these programs have a lot of influence on how committed these people become, and how long they stay in the field.  So, I think these alternative preparation programs can have a huge influence on the population of teachers.

The literature suggests that most teachers come from the bottom quarter or third of their college classes.  Simply stated, we're not getting the best and brightest!  We're getting those who "can't" but who will teach.  So a good question is "How does any program, whether "regular" or "alternative" attract more highly qualified people into this profession?"

Many of these programs are very adult.  That is to say they treat folks coming into the program like grownups.  They involve them in constructing some of their activities and involve them in evaluating the teaching they experience, and in asking them to devise better ways to prepare themselves. 

The least successful teacher prep programs, in my opinion, are the ones which provide hoop-jumping exercises.  Future educators jump through 16 hoops or 32 hoops and get their U.S. Government Teaching Certificate.  They don't ask, don't challenge, don't question.

I think that a school of education, department of education, or teacher education can also become a community of learners!  In an elementary school, the teachers and principal need to be first-class citizens of that community of learners. 

They expect the kids to take learning seriously.  In schools of education, faculty members need to join that community of learners, model continuous learning and inquiry and be open to doing something different next September than last September.

The culture of many schools of education and programs of education in my mind are not sufficiently open to promoting continuous examination, inquiry and change.

I think we are modeling in teacher training institutions exactly what we don't want in schools.  What would happen if the first obligation of a school of education became to exemplify the ideal elementary, middle and high school? 

Teachers learn through the hidden curriculum in teacher education institutions, that this is what their teacher does - you stand up, you give assignments, you give tests, you call on students, and that's what I'm supposed to do when I get a classroom full of kids.  We have to model the kind of organization, the kind of learning environment in our teacher education that we want these teachers to create once they enter the elementary school or high school.  In a school for instance, we say we like to see teachers working together as colleagues, not in self-contained, isolated classrooms.  Okay.  Well, instead of a professor espousing collegiately yet practicing alone, let's parade in front of beginning teachers a variety of ways adults can work together. 

When I was Director of the Principal Center at Harvard, we engaged in a little bit of research.  We went out to the schools and talked to principals, talked to teachers, and observed in schools looking for some sign that there might have been an influence or a transfer from the ten day summer institute or from, say, the series of six workshops around writing.

Surprise!  What we found was that most of these principals were taking back to the schoolhouse not the content in which we engaged them.  What they were taking back was the methodology.  So if we used videotapes and reflective time looking at them together, they were using videotapes.  If we had creative writing workshops for principals, they would have writing workshops with the teachers in their schools.  If we took them on a ropes course, they took their faculties on a ropes course.

I suspect some content may have filtered back in as well.  But if you take our experience to the school of education-they learn what we do, not what we say-then, it seems to me, we need to spend some intentional time working on what we do.

JE/MS:  Would you describe yourself  as a historian, educational theorist, or a storyteller?

RB:   I'm not sure I've ever described myself!  I think if I had to, I'd describe myself as an "educator."  For me, that's someone who, as I said earlier, spends a lot of time trying to discover and provide the conditions under which people's learning curves go off the cchart.  My own children's learning curves, my students and client's learning curve, my own learning curve.

That's what I tried to do as a fifth grade teacher.  That's what I wanted teachers to dowhen I was a principal.  That's what I tried to foster as a professor.  The evidence that large groups, didactic instruction occurs about 85% of the time in k-12 schools-and in universities.  There's also evidence that "sit 'n get" is a notoriously weak treatment.  One might retain - at best 5%  in six weeks from this pedagogy.  If I could do anything to transform our profession it would be to reverse the ratio:  15% didactic talk, 085% something else.  What do you do 85% of the time if you don't talk?  Now we have become true educators, developing a repertoire of methods other than "sit 'n get." 

I try to find conditions that really promote learning.

JE/MS:  Do we do enough to help parents of children with exceptionalities?

RB:   If you have 30 kids in a class, you have 30 kids who have exceptionalities.  I've never met a kid who didn't have an exceptionality of some sort or another.  Growing up in a home with 16 siblings - that's exceptionality.  If a kid stutters, that's exceptionality.  If a kid is really excited about dinosaurs, that's exceptionality.  There are many different types of exceptionalities.  I would like to see this profession dedicated to identifying 00these and building upon them in positive ways.  That's what I would really like to see.

JE/MS:  Real broad general question:  How has inclusion and mainstreaming influenced or affected American education?

RB:   I think increasing the range of differences within classrooms makes teaching more difficult.  I think many teachers dream of having a class full of kids who are very similar and therefore who can be batch-processed, who will finish their work in the same aamount of time, and will be ready to move onto the same book together.  When you put ttogether a classroom that has a wider range, than even most classrooms have, of abilities and of interests and of attention spans, of special needs, you put huge demands on 0 teachers.

I think this is a demand of dealing with exceptionalities, what we just talked about.  I don't think there is enough examination of the upside of increasing differences within a classroom.  There's quite a lot of research which suggests that people - little people called ninth graders or second graders and bigger people called "us"-most people learn best and most when differences are maximized. 

I remember when we were setting up the first summer institute at the Harvard Principal Center. There were 200 applicants for 100 spaces from principals all over the country.  I was working with a little group of principals, planning and conducting this summer institute.  Our question was, "Which 100 of these 200 are we going to take?"The usual convention or rule of course is to get references or grades or scores and 0identify the best and the brightest.  That's what you do at Harvard.

Well to their credit, this little group of principals said, "Let's deliberately select the 100 most different principals we can find."  If we're going to have a conversation about 0 parental involvement and around that table you've got seated a principal from a 3,000 student high school in the Bronx, a principal from a Catholic parochial school, a principal from a K-12 school on an island in Kodiak, Alaska, you're going to have a novel, interesting and instructive conversation.  Much more so than if you take all 16 principals in Watertown, Massachusetts and sit them around a table and say let's talk about parental involvement.

I think maximizing differences, along many dimensions is one of those conditions which help promote profound human learning.

JE/MS:  What are the main challenges facing parents, teachers, and administrators as we enter this new millennium?

RB:   We've already entered the new millennium and I think it's become more difficult to be a parent, more difficult to be a teacher, and it's become more difficult to be an administrator.  Some of the difficulties are shared amongst those groups, some aren't.  If you have both parents working or the only parent working, now how are you going to raise your child?

That's a difficult experience for a lot of parents and children.  In the past, usually one parent or a big chunk of one parent was always at home.  Frequently, that's no longer the case.  That's an example of a difficulty peculiar to parents.Teachers, I think, face a huge difficulty living under the specter of standardized tests.  That's not what most teachers signed up for when they entered this profession - to teach to the test, to administer tests, to live in fear of the tests.  They signed up because they believe that they had some good ideas about how to instruct youngsters and they wanted to put them into practice.  Most are now finding they have to keep "two sets of books." 

One set of books represents compliance - they have to comply to just enough of what the principal demands, the superintendent, the board demands, Washington demands, so that they don't get fired.  The other set of books represents "here's what I signed up for" and "here's what I really believe in."  I want to take the kids on field trips even though it doesn't have anything to do with the standardized test or what the board demands.  So I think most teachers are maintaining two sets of books.  In the past, there has been considerable overlap.  "Well I can find a way of doing what I really believe in and what satisfies 'them'."  But now, the two sets of books are becoming more discrepant and as the pressures get higher, there is less and less room for what I care about.  "I'll never finish your set of books so how will I ever get to my set of books?"  This is enormously demoralizing for teachers.

Regarding the difficulties for the administrator, the principal, I find that good school leadership has become a very contentious and elusive concept.  Trying to find what characteristics of leadership which will bring these teachers and parents together in support of a common purpose sanctioned by the authorities is a heroic task.  There is so much fragmentation, so many factions. 

The form of leadership I find most often succeeding is moving in the direction of what I would call a "community of leaders."You become a leader of leaders - inviting and allowing others to lead with you rather than attempting to lead alone like John Wayne or Joan of Arc.

JE/MS:  Okay.  Switching gears again.  What do you find the most influential book in the last 10, 20 years?

RB:  There have been a lot of them.  I think many were influential at the time and no longer are.  A few seem to have some shelf life. I guess a follow-up question would be "influential to whom?"  You can say to the profession, you can say to teachers, to the principals, to school reformers, or you can say the most influential to me.  Among the books that I have found enormously influential is called Schoolteacher by Dan Lortie, around 1970.  It's an ethnographic study of the teaching profession and it really made visible for me what it means to be a teacher.  At that time I was teaching and found it enormously helpful.  The Ted Sizer Horace books provided another wonderful insight into high school teaching.

I find Deborah Meyers' recent book, The Power of Our Idea a wonderful progressive antidote to the increasingly traditional culture in our profession.  She really rekindled the flame of John Dewey for me.  It is an inspiring book by somebody not just talking about it, but somebody doing it in the schools.

JE/MS:  What question or questions have we neglected to ask?

RB:   I think the whole concept of teacher leadership is one we haven't addressed.  I truly believe that if schools are ever going to change, then it's not going to come from outside and it's probably not going to come from the principal inside.  It's going to come from a large number of teachers who have assumed the responsibility for portions of the entire school as well as for their classrooms.

Schools I see where things are really changing, strengthening, really becoming exciting for youngsters and adults, are places where teacher leadership is thriving.  This is one place schools of education and departments of education are willfully negligent.  They are preparing teachers to go into the classroom, but I think they also need to lay some groundwork and plant some seeds and teach some skills for teachers to become change agents of their school.

I remember my first year teaching.  It was all I could do to get those 30 kids to do their reading.  So how can you talk to me about getting a computer lab going for the school?  Or involving parents in the school?  Or developing staff development programs for a school?  It's easier said than done. If you are really interested in promoting learning in kids, you've got to surround them with adults who are learning.  They will look at the most important role model in their lives and say, "I want to be like that."  If they see teachers as asking questions, exploring, going on the Internet, reading, sharing, learning, cooperating, they too want to ask questions, go on the Internet, read, learn and cooperate.

So how do you bring teachers, especially veteran teachers to life, as learners, when they have been engaged in an extraordinarily routinized profession?

One way, a very powerful way, is to invite them into positions of school leadership.  When you are responsible for something-- say setting up a computer lab or running staff development activities for the faculty -- when you are responsible for something and you don't know much about it, and how you proceed is going to affect a whole lot of other people, you are now in a position of profound learning.  You are an insatiable learner.  0

You are going to read, talk to people, evaluate, share and come alive.  You come alive as a learner when you come alive as a leader!  I would go so far as to say that only a school culture hospitable to widespread leadership will be a school culture hospitable to widespread learning. 

I don't know of any school anymore that can be "led" by a single individual.  It is too complex, far too demanding, and far too intractable for any one person to lead alone.  Building a community of leaders and accepting into that community and students and parents and teachers is a powerful concept whose time has come.

JE/MS:  We certainly thank you for your thoughts, ideas and insights!

Roland S. Barth is a well known consultant to schools, school systems, universities, state Departments of Education, foundations and businesses both in the United States and abroad. He received his AB degree from Princeton University and both master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. He has served as a public school teacher and principal for fifteen years in Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976 and joined the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for thirteen years. He serves as Chairman of the Board of the Principal Residency Network and a member of the Board of Educational Advisors of the Phi Delta Kappan. He is the author of Open Education and the American School, Run School Run, Improving Schools From Within, Learning by Heart, Cruising Rules : Relationships at Sea and most recently Lessons Learned : Shaping Relationships and the Culture of the Workplace published by Corwin Press. In this interview. he discusses his current ideas and reflects on things that are often not discussed in the schools and the impact of the recent legislative mandates regarding education.